Mongoose

Was going to mention that myself. I just finished both Down and Out in Paris and London and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. Orwell's commentary on money is definitely worth checking out. A very different glimpse of capitalism than that often seen on HN.

Humanities academics can obfuscate meaning just as proficiently as any engineer. See: http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html

The fact that this comment has almost as many upvotes as the OP speaks wonders for the HN community.

It feels like this same article could have been published 3 years ago. Most of these (Firefox, Wordpress and maybe VLC and Handbrake aside) have been great apps that no one uses for years.

Is there a bash.org-style site for programmer horror stories? They pop up once in a while on HN, but it would be nice to have a single-service site for these kinds of stories.

I'm three weeks into an internship on the Google Maps tile-rendering team.

In Ive's case, the British accent helps. Hearing him talk about his design decisions is captivating in the same way as David Attenborough narrating nature.

As much as I appreciate Leo and ZenHabits, his content us ultra-cyclical. I understand the efficacy of repetition, but I unsubscribed after the 500th post on "doing less." This post is more of a teaser and linkbait for the rest of his site than a solid example of his capacity to inspire.

I built something like this for Sunlight Labs' Apps For America contest last summer. It feeds US patent application abstracts to a Markov processor to generate random invention descriptions. http://eurekaapp.com/

It's pretty slow (tail call optimization in Ruby would be nice), but what it spits out tends to be pretty funny.

With Starcraft 2 imminent, I can add one item to the hobby list.

What a cool idea. I've been trying to think of how urban farming could benefit from software, but it looks like you beat me to the punch. You might try networking with the people at Window Farms (http://www.windowfarms.org/). This service in conjunction with modern hydroponics would be a match made in heaven.

Seems like a great complement to Drew's other lessons learned deck: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1290303

Pretty cool to see a design lead with knowledge of Markov models. Granted, someone on his team may have filled him in.

Love the TLDR summary at the bottom. That should become more of a trend.

I'm glad that Adobe decided to take the mature route. Further lashing out against Apple would have only exacerbated the situation.

In the end, Jobs provided a very rational argument and the brevity of Adobe's response lends itself well to that conclusion.

Gotta say, your questions are spot on, Andrew. You expertly lived up to the task of interviewing the queen of founder interviews. I liked how you guided her to talk about her rarely-heard perspective of YC, in particular your question on spotting patterns in pg's magic. After hearing him voice his opinions and respect for Jessica a couple months ago on Mixergy, it's great to hear her reciprocate.

Thanks!

I wondered the same thing. The intonation and excitement behind their voices are remarkably similar.

The Art of War is definitely worth at least one read.

Glad to see Airbnb getting some good press. It's really a well-designed service worthy of praise. I stayed in a tipi in a local couple's backyard during a trip to SF last weekend thanks to them. http://www.airbnb.com/rooms/16745

I find the best method is to just jump in. Once you make a solid effort to dive into something, your drive to complete the task at hand will snowball as you get more work done.

YMMV, especially with really difficult or irritating tasks. It's all about overcoming the barrier of entry, be it due to a lack of experience, interest, or value.

I'm currently a junior at UW, studying computer engineering. I don't know too many fellow HNers from school, but there's definitely plenty of opportunities here for a budding hacker. Feel free to email me if you ever want advice or info on the CSE department: meagher@cs.washington.edu

I thought it was great. The format was very ad hoc, with people just standing around and talking. Definitely one of the better networking events I've been to. I talked to a number of YC alums and local entrepreneurs, got good feedback on a few startup ideas, and some advice on grad school. Not to mention free beer. I'll definitely have to start going to more startup/hacker events here in Seattle.

Good timing. I need a patent to study and write a quick report on for an IP class I'm taking. This will do nicely.

Not to mention students still in college. Being a fulltime student is akin to being a fulltime employee, with or without a spouse. Add in undergrad research still more time is taken up.

It's all about priorities. You have to allocate your time wisely and remove activities that aren't centrally valuable.

At least you got to see it at all. I don't get MSNBC, so I was left in the cold. However, the Russia/Czech Republic game on NBC was a decent consolation prize. Turned out to be a great game down to the last minute.

I'm glad it turned out nicely for you guys, given that the Olympics are in your backyard. I would've liked CBC to have Olympic coverage though, as it's the only Canadian channel broadcast in the Seattle/Puget Sound area. I could've then watched the US vs Canada hockey game yesterday, given my lack of MSNBC.

I'm not arguing against the efficacy of the drumsticks. They're vastly more unique and useful than the heap of lanyards, mints, and stickers that accumulate after conferences or career fairs. They're one of the few pieces of schwag that I'll probably have with me 6 months from now. So, in terms of their goal as marketing tools, they're perfect. My only issue was with the overuse of the "rockstar" title being applied to developers.

Whitepages.com always seems to recruit very aggressively at career fairs at my school (U of WA). They'll be at a booth nestled in between Intel and Google pitching their hearts out. Commendable, to say the least.

However, they majorly over-played the "rockstar programmer" meme by handing out branded drumsticks and guitar picks last year. I always laugh upon noticing my pair of Whitepages.com drumsticks when unpacking my snare drum.

Daniel Lemire of UQAM has a number of good blog posts on new forms of scientific publishing:

http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2009/10/01/a-simp...

http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2009/09/02/author...

http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2009/10/28/the-se...

I'm working as an undergrad research assistant for a distributed systems ploject within UW's CSE department.

https://seattle.cs.washington.edu/